Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson continues to break the fourth wall as the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. And she has made one thing plain: There are moments when she sees the majority opinion as an “existential threat to the rule of law.”
Jackson has often been a unique voice of dissent when it comes to hot-button issues, including the Trump administration’s effort to end birthright citizenship and launch mass federal firings. She has used her position to signal to the public — and possibly to future justices — her concerns about the direction of the court.
“She isn’t the first person to do this, but she’s the first Black woman to do it,” Melissa Murray, a professor at the New York University School of Law, told Capital B. “And her point is clear: This is not a drill. The court, in her view, appears to be putting a thumb on the scale of this administration and applying the rules unevenly.”
On Thursday, a federal judge agreed to place a new block on President Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to get rid of birthright citizenship, which was “constitutionalized” through the 14th Amendment during the period after slavery known as Reconstruction. It’s uncertain what will happen next, but the administration could appeal.
Thursday’s ruling came almost two weeks after the Supreme Court, in an important case involving birthright citizenship, limited lower courts’ ability to block presidential policy.
Jackson acknowledged that she agreed with “every word” of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, which she joined. But she also wrote separately, she explained, to underscore her unease about some of her colleagues’ actions.
“Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway,” Jackson wrote. “But this Court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.”
The majority maintained that nationwide injunctions “likely exceed” the power of these courts, but it left open the ability of challengers to pursue a block through a class-action lawsuit. This is what occurred Thursday.
Jackson’s dissents illuminate that Black Americans aren’t monolithic and that intergenerational conflicts can be significant, according to Murray.
“For several decades, Justice Clarence Thomas enjoyed pride of place as the only Black American on the court. And when he talked about race, he did so in a way that couldn’t be challenged by his colleagues,” she said. “Jackson is undermining his authority as the only Black American on the court, because he’s not anymore.”
Jackson commented on the roots of her resolve as a jurist during a conversation with ABC News’s Linsey Davis at the Essence Festival of Culture earlier this month.
The Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate has always stood out from her peers as she parries the perception that if a Black woman is on the bench, then she must have been an unqualified affirmative action hire.
“The timing of my birth, I think, is critical to understanding my sense of self-confidence and the way in which I move through the world,” Jackson explained. She added that “1970 was within four or five years of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the end of Jim Crow segregation” and that “the idea of giving up on yourself” wasn’t a choice for her.
Here are three other dissents from this past term when Jackson highlighted her dissatisfaction with the majority.
Mass layoffs at federal agencies
What the majority said: The court allowed the Trump administration to continue with mass firings at more than a dozen federal agencies and departments while litigation moves forward.
Federal work had long been an avenue by which Black Americans could secure steady pay, good benefits, and enter the middle class.
What Jackson said: The order was unsigned, and Jackson was the only one to note her vehement disapproval.
“For some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation,” she wrote, adding that the majority showed “neither caution nor scrutiny.” “In my view, this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”
Planned Parenthood
What the majority said: The court argued that Planned Parenthood lacked standing to sue South Carolina over its decision to deny funding to the reproductive health organization on the basis that it provides abortion. The decision could have larger implications, and embolden other red states to cut off Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding.
The organization this week filed a lawsuit in response to Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which includes a 1-year measure preventing clinics that provide abortions from receiving Medicaid for any of their reproductive services, including screenings for sexually transmitted infections. Advocates fear that these actions will deepen the country’s Black maternal health crisis.
What Jackson said: Jackson and Thomas sparred over the interpretation of a law from the Reconstruction era empowering people to challenge the government in federal court if they believe that their civil rights have been violated.
“[The court’s decision] will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them,” Jackson wrote. “More concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians — and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country — of a deeply personal freedom: the ‘ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable.’”
Deportations to El Salvador
What the majority said: Ruling on an emergency application, the court removed a temporary injunction that had prevented the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to send to El Salvador those Venezuelan nationals they claim have ties to an international gang.
This move came amid Trump’s crackdown on immigration, as the president sought to ban travel to the U.S. for citizens of a dozen countries, most of them in Africa and the Middle East. Challenges to the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act are ongoing.
What Jackson said: Though Sotomayor wrote the principal dissent, which Jackson joined, the junior justice also contributed a solo one, condemning the majority’s tendency to decide cases on an emergency basis. Such cases don’t receive a full briefing or oral argument, and this lack of transparency has prompted critics to call it the “shadow docket.”
“At least when the Court went off base in the past, it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong,” Jackson wrote, referring to the infamous 1944 case Korematsu v. United States, when the court upheld the internment of Japanese Americans.
“With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today’s Court leaves less and less of a trace,” she added. “But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it.”
Great Job Brandon Tensley & the Team @ Capital B News Source link for sharing this story.
